What the fuck is that ? Some sort of plot ? Yeah, I'm a programmer, bitch. I figured that since computers are everywhere, I might as well learn how they work. (and yeah, in this day and age, I view ppl who don't do the same as morons, but that's OT).

I don't care about your friday upcoming party, because my friends and me will be baking a batch of PCBs, while listening to actually good music. And I won't fix your iMac.

I come to /. to read about stuff that matters to me, to us, and this trend of totally OT articles is RUINING it for everyone. Way to go, guys, everytime the headlines are getting stupider and stupider, and this one is quite the pinnacle of stupidity, I mean look at that : "Has apple made programmers cool ?" Wow. Who would want to read this ? And ppl are actually commenting this ? Like the 1st poster ? "yeah no, I'm a real certified geek (with any apple shit, go figure), I get wimen, they love me", wow, man... You're such a douche..!

Where do you draw the line ? I'm sure the first baker wanted to keep making bread alone. Now you got Monsanto and others trying to patent potatoes. I don't know about you, but when I see that, it makes me want to rip apart a Nokia N900 and build it myself.

I won't use Macs for a lot of reasons, but I have to admit : PC laptops suck big time. It's not so much about build quality. Well, not juste that.

Take the keyboard backlight : Most Mac laptops are back-lighted. Once you see and use that you don't want to use anything else. You'd think the next PC laptop will have this. I don't know how to say how valuable this is to me, to be able to see the freaking keys on the keyboard, especially given that on laptops, keys are often creatively misplaced.

THAT alone. ANY laptop that goes out of the factory without providing a means of seeing the keys in a dark (like the lid led old on thinkpads) room is just a badlyt designed waste of silicon.

also on the list :

-Crappy keyboard layouts (I need a direct access to my "page down" key. Do you hear me ? I *need* it. Period.
-Materials used for sensible parts, like trackpads (I want to use it with wet fingers, and please don't ask me why, just do it)
-Shiny screens (just so they look good in the store... Pfflease)
-Bits only there for "aesthetics", like false metal axis on the hinge, this is embarrassing for everyone, guys.
-Stupid ergonomics again : If there is two buttons (trackpad, rocker switches, etc) why does it look like one big unique one ? Just to confuse young and old people ? Good job.

And generally, the bad feeling you get when using this stuff, you know when you find yourself asking, many times, "why was this implemented this way" ? And can't find ANY good answer.

To illustrate my post, take a look at any HP, Acer, Dell, MSI produced in the last 5 years. Yes, it's that bad.

That's another thing I hate about apple : Just by actually using their *brains* when they design stuff, they make the rest of us look bad.

HTML5+JS

I work for a major Linux distro in the education field. Around the world. Most decision-makers are actively bribed by Microsoft.

They shower Windows and Office licenses on schools and entire countries in exchange for brains.

Microsoft know what they are doing : *This*, the education market, is their bread and butter. They are extremely aggressive about that, just mention "education" to a Microsoft executive and observe his reaction.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTQxNg
Right now, such a machine, as it is delivered to you today, can't run Linux. Well it can, really, using 1.8Gb of RAM.
This is happening, right now.

Wow, this tablet's design suck in a way I would not have though possible. The useless black surrounding space seem bigger than the actual viewing area, what is this ? Joe People wants flush "full screen" screens, and if you have to put the HW *behind* the screen, making the tablet a tad bigger, so be it ! Nobody minds having a thickish tablet, it makes it somehow sturdier (you *will* sit on it at some point) but everybody, when asked "what do you think about this empty area around the screen of your laptop / phone / tablet / TV / GPS / Gizmo" ? reply "it sucks". 100%. E-ve-ry-bo-dy. Well not everybody, 5% actually say "oh I didn't notice, I don't mind" but they are morons who don't know how to spell "ergonomics" and add "bars" to their Internet Explorer 6. Put stickers on windowpanes. Take 2.5 parking spaces. Morons. Apparently some work as HW designers. (oh and that handing the encryption keys to every cop who asks nicely? Way to go RIM, it's not like your loyal customer base actually trusted you with their data confidentiality)

Guys, hello ? The N900 / Maemo platform got canned pretty badly by Nokia. It's almost like they did the whole "Maemo / internet tablet" line to study the impact that a really cool, innovative, user-empowering platform would have, in order to NOT do it. To their defense, this system spawned a whole hard-core community of geeky users, and before they knew it they RTFM like there's no tomorrow, dismantled the phone, wrote custom low-level drivers, gathered assemblies, voted to define politic directions, heck now that the platform is dead, they downright have the high hand over the system updates. This, depending on who you ask, is either a dream, or a nightmare.

Yeah, because "the IT industry" wants insightful, informed and tech-savvy users, they demonstrate that every day. Right. IMO it's quite the opposite : The PC market with its "anarchic user paradise of freedom of choice and free information" is seen as an accident that mustn't be reproduced.

Oooh a x86 in my pocket, yeah ! Can't wait. My balls are a bit cold. Now seriously. Now we know the google way : Troll ppl up with something mildly cool, and once everybody is hooked up, turn it into a big pile of crippled, proprietary horseshit. Android is SO lame it makes me want to check WinPhone out !! Just kidding. Oh wait, a new community SSU on my Nokia N900 ! We are basically 42,5 people/geeks to own a Maemo phone. The vendor itself dommed it, and the OS with it. And yet there is every kind of possible - useful - app, a real user base, now even managing OS updates. You don't see this kind of user commitment to Android. Why would you ? Come to think of it, Apple made a very good job at ruining the whole smartphone market.